Politics Clinton-Trump Tied in New Poll, 24% Opt Out of Race

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds Trump and Clinton tied at 38% each. But 16% say they would vote for some other candidate if the presidential election comes down to those two, while six percent (6%) would stay home. Only two percent (2%) are undecided given those options. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on April 25-26, 2016 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.

Despite speculation that Trump may have a problem with women voters, women and men are equally likely to say they would stay home or vote third party in the event of a Clinton-Trump race. Men prefer Trump by six points, while women give Clinton the edge by a similar margin.

Rasmussen, huh? Great, now I know the opinions of Sanka-sipping people who still use land line phones and see AM radio as a prime entertainment source.

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Just to look at one methodological issue, if no one answers the phone, Rasmussen picks a different random phone number instead of calling back two, three, four or more times as other pollsters do. Why does this matter? Because 20-somethings (who skew Democratic) are often out, whereas 60-somethings (who skew Republican) are often in. By not being persistent in finally getting through to a randomly chosen phone number, the sample is inherently biased towards Republicans because they are easier to reach. This may not have been intentional but it is understandable if you want to finish your survey in 4 hours.